Preventing youth crime focus of OSCE facilitated meetings in Bishkek

The OSCE facilitated working group meetings on youth crime prevention that brought together representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Culture, Information, Sports and Youth Policy of the Kyrgyz Republic, and experts from Kyrgyz civil society.

The OSCE Transnational Threats Department and the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities organized these meetings, held on 3 November and 8 December 2022. During the meetings, government and civil society representatives provided feedback on youth crime prevention school and university curricula as well as on the youth social media awareness-raising strategy on integrity and the rule of law. The curricula and strategy were prepared by the OSCE at the request of the Kyrgyz government, capitalizing on the UNODC Education4Justice materials under the Doha Declaration.

The educational curricula and the awareness-raising campaign were developed by the OSCE under a Memorandum of Understanding and Co-operation (MoU)  signed between the OSCE and the Kyrgyz government on youth crime prevention in April 2022. As part of the MoU, the OSCE assists the Kyrgyz authorities in implementing their national commitments, namely the Youth State Policy and the State Anti-Corruption and Drug Control Strategies. These documents emphasize the importance of youth education and awareness-raising on the rule of law and integrity to prevent these phenomena.

The OSCE will train teachers, professors and juvenile affairs officers on these youth crime prevention curricula in summer 2023, which will then be rolled out as a pilot in different schools and universities across Kyrgyzstan. The social media awareness-raising campaign for youth on the dangers of organized crime, corruption and illicit drugs and on the importance of the rule of law and integrity will also be launched across the country in the summer of 2023.

These activities took place as part of the “Enhancing youth crime and drug use prevention through education on legality and awareness campaigns addressing threats of organized crime and corruption” project, which is funded by Germany and the Polish OSCE Chairmanship.